Slashdot Mirror
Automatic Christmas Music
crispinalt writes "Just in time for the holiday season, Brian Whitman, the creator of Eigenradio, has had his computers compose the 'statistically optimal' Christmas music in A Singular Christmas, a freely downloadable MP3 album. A bank of computers listened to as much Christmas music as they could handle, and then learned their own true meaning of holiday cheer. Enjoy!"
I listened to it and well...
it's a bit creepy, although it could reflect how I sometimes feel in the middle of the Christmas rush.
Hmm, I don't know if any of you will be able to actually listen to this "music" but it certainly isn't worth wasting your time and bandwith to try. Expecting something more like "music" I downloaded it at work and at home before the story posted to the front page for everyone...
To my surprise it is quite "infantile". What I mean when I say "infantile" is that it sounds like a 9 month old baby banging on the keys randomly until you want to duct tape their hands together (see 02 - Mountain noel for an example of this).
03 - Faithful clear is certainly "clear" as it is basically the same tone for 2:31. Really holidayish, thanks! Expecting 13 - Cherry misfortune to perhaps be exactly the opposite I listened intently three times hoping to catch a glimpse of the artistry that would cause this story to be posted to Slashdot. I didn't find it.
Needless to say it won't exactly be a Merry Christmas for Brian Whitman and his computers and I doubt they will be making any money anytime soon if they continue to put out work of this "caliber"...
Brian, perhaps "17 - Silent night" should just be a blank MP3 that goes on for 2:34. I think that one would be the most popular.
1. Spread catnip on organ keys
2. Add two cats and a recorder
3. ???
4. Profit!!
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
...of fruitcake.
I work at Rockefeller Center in NYC - the music is starting to drive me mad!! The *last* thing I need is people finding ways to optimize the torture!
--LWM
I can't listen to this stuff, maybe someone in the first few moved it instead of copying, so please put it back :)
/. crowd, all them servers are belong to us :7
Geez, we, the
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
just give me Adam Sandler & the Chipmunks
I for one greet our new Christmas-song listening computerized Overlords.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
all is gone, all the bytes
round platters spinning away
IT admins going "what the hey"
Thrash in heavenly peace, thrash your drives to pieces.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
More Christmas music? No thanks. I was hanging out at the liquor store yesterday (hooray for holiday wine) and was talking to some of the store employees. Although I insisted they shut off that fscking music, they said in fact it's piped in from head office. This seems to be the case with many stores these days; Christmas music is just piped in. Apparently it has a positive effect on sales, as people have been trained to associate Christmas music with opening their wallets.
It aint about religion, boy, it's about $$.
It would also be a Copyright Infringement of John Cage's most famous work :)
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
but how can he post these?!? MP3s are illegal. mit's gonna have is ass. he should be ashamed for robbing profits from a desperate industry
Not really new I think. :)
They already use this technique to churn out new Boybands and Reality TV shows - at least that's the only way I can explain them.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
You know, sometimes slashdot reminds me of that old Weird Al movie UHF:
Stanley Spadowski: Who wants to take a drink from the fire hose!
*Kid gets knocked up against the wall by the water pressure*
Slashdot is the water pressure.
Is it just me or does anyone else think it's a bit weird to have a computer pick out everything in our lives? Do we really need a computer to tell us what music we like to listen to? I don't think so.
No, but thanks to Slashdot, i can not listen to it and not think of Dirk Gently :p
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
No, but working on getting the file. ;]
Hint: try https://
[sneaky "back door" works like a charm
Only if the 2:34 is an exact subset, or sample, of the complete 4:33 work, right? Otherwise, it could be a completely different composition of rests of different lengths than the 4:33 work. :-)
I find Eigenradio and likewise this Christmas project as something of an overworked joke. The resulting buzzing noise isn't really listen-able or interesting or telling.
You could take all the stuff in your refrigerator--a composite, if you will of all your favorite foods, toss them in a blender and you'd have an unappealing brown slop. Ha ha. Kind of funny conceptually, but you wouldn't necessarily open a restaurant serving it.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
Students at Miami left today; I have about 140 megabits to lay waste to if someone would like to give it to me (scp or something) you can IM me at ToadMan8. I kinda want to see if I can /. the University.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
The server has taken a holiday, so here's a mirror as a gift!
http://www.madweb.org/A_Singular_Christmas.zip
Have fun killing my bandwidth. ;)
has to be Barbera Streisand's frenetic in-your-face version of Jingle Bells that always makes my eyeballs bleed whenever I hear it. ....but your taste may vary...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Ctrl+Alt+Del got it right in the "Video Games Don't Make People Violent..." strip. :-)
I wonder how soon is the RIAA going to claim he committed a copyright infringement by processing the music with a neural network (presumedly) and publishing the results?
I also wonder how many software patents he infringed on by implementing the program(s)... Y'know, math isn't everyone's privilege.
The album should be called "A Christmas In Computer Hell" or maybe "Heilige Fucked Up Buzz Box Nacht"
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
You know what's statistically optimal?
The unit probability of a dude who writes computer programs that can compose their own music not having the bandwidth in place for a proper slashdotting.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A^ytR^%}}}}}}}}}}}
Crap. I'm downloading it. It's like the big red button with a sign that says DO NOT PUSH. Well, now I HAVE to even though I know it will only lead to a dark and scarey place ;)
Miami network admin: "Sir? We've got gigabytes of usage all of a sudden, all from one VLAN."
Miami network manager: "Let's see... all the students have gone home. Who's left in that building?"
30 seconds later, Toadman8 becomes confused as his IM session (and all network traffic) drops.
Moral of the story: When laying waste to a network bandwidth-wise, it is best to do it when you're able to point a finger elsewhere.
to do a mathematical analysis of tonal and atonal music, there isn't a significant difference (atleast with good atonal music, which is hard to come by) suggesting the difference lies within our biology.
the reason this music seems so repulsive is likely the fact that the computer only studied the music.
in the middle ages, back when that root of all evil the christian church (catholic? same thing) ruled europe, certain chords were deemed "dissonant" because priests didnt like the way they sounded. i believe it all started firstly with the "devil's" chord. anywho, any competant musician can tell you that its really hard, maybe impossible, to write good music using dissonant chords.
i think it was mozart, maybe bach, who tried to write a symphony using dissonant chords. but he could not.
in much computerized music, and indeed in this music, dissonant chords find free reign, possibly due to a sense of anti-inhibition and free spirit-y-ness (okay, i made that word up, but you should understand what i mean) on the part of the programmer, or maybe just a lack of experience in creating music.
maybe this kind of thing would turn out better if the computer started from the beginning, and used the conventions, before trying to break them.
isn't that the rule about learning to code? and about learning to write?
if you think im making shit up, you can always check my facts yer selves, you lazy punks! wikipedia roxorz!
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Except that John Cage's version is 4:33. And Silent Night was first performed in it's current form in 1818, so John Cage is the one in trouble. That is, if he weren't already dead.
Get a hammer, bash the crap out of the song-serving laptop
Guys guys guys (and gals too)... Violence against a machine never solved anything. You gotta bash the USER with the hammer to make the difference.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
And no, they really didn't take it that seriously , they knew that their sampling and control methods weren't all that strict, and were aware that the resulting music isn't likely to actually generate responses that meet the projected stats. :)
Komar and Melamid also did a "most wanted painting" project, which has the actual survey results and resulting paintings available online.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Um, let's see, what else? Ah, the tritone (augmented 4th/diminished 5th) was the Devil's tone, and it was in fact essentially verboten for some time, but has certainly been in wide use both in and out of the church for the last 300 years at least. Oh, and Mozart wrote a string quartet which was dubbed "Dissonances" that very successfully makes dissonant harmonies a fundamental part of it's materials.
I'm a pretty competent musician, a composer no less, and I couldn't imagine keeping a musical line interesting without the use of dissonance at some level--it really is not feasible. Its like trying to discern depth without light and shadows... contrastless mush.
To reign is to serve.
You insensitive clod!
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
of my life that I'll never get back. How is it that this not-quite-random noise is considered worthy of note on /.? If it were of decent artisitc quality, I could see why it might make news, but I could churn out garbage like this on my Apple IIe in elementary school.
http://www.users.muohio.edu/toaddyjm/slashdot/A_Si ngular_Christmas.zip2
;).
Let's see if you guys can break the webserver! I think it'll survive, personally, but many others have said that in the past
Thanks to hfcs http://slashdot.org/~hfcs/ for the file!
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
never done this before so i hope it works correctly...
i p.torrent
:)
http://maximus.homedns.org/A_Singular_Christmas.z
If I notice funny business I'll kill my entire connection so play nice
Mirror!.
Thanks! ^_^ You'd think the MIT would be intelligent enough to set up a torrent themselves...
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
So is it just me, or does it seem like Slashdot, knowing that they are about to post a link and bury a server, should maybe offer a temporary torrent system for stories that they post. This was only 60M. They have the user accounts all set up and ready to go. They could even offer karma to seeders (or yank Karma from leechers that bail)
./ blows more bandwidth on the banner ad on the page then it would take to just show you the picture/article/etc)
I'm not saying host the files forever, just till they fall off the main page or so. It's the same with stories. A CacheDot would ease the first three posts commenting on the missing server.
Just a thought. Don't get me wrong, if you Slashdot yourself for shits and giggles, you get what you asked for, but for people that get submitted by other people, it's a different story. (Plus half the time
It's kind of like what you'd expect a snail to compose.
(shivers)
But the stuff posed in this article will give you a headache.
:)
Instead, check out David Cope's Experiments in Musical Intelligence. You can download mp3s of some great pieces modeled after great composers. And the computer science behind it is also cool: Cope's approach involved developing a grammar for music, such that the generated pieces followed this grammar. Much easier on the ears
After having listened to these it is obvious that they ran the program on the wrong directory. Should have been:
/allthegoodchristmasmusic /home/brian/newmusic
/dev/null /home/brian/newmusic
$ automakemusic -scan
not:
$ automakemusic -scan
A distinctive mark, characteristic, or sound indicating identity
Yeah I think you got it - these algorithms do not recognize what humans find attractive about music - such things as rhythm, and having mostly major-scale harmony and very little dissonance, especially in "happy music" like Christmas music.
And saying that it is statistically optimal feels Orwellian.
But I suspect the researchers don't actually like this stuff either, they're just curious to observe people's reactions.